Week 9

Today we went to Nemea. Nemea is famous because it’s where the mythical lion from the 12 labors of Hercules lived. Unfortunately we met no magic lions but we did get a really great site tour from Liz Langridge-Noti. We got to explore all around the site include go inside the temple which we usually can’t do. In antiquity Nemea hosted athletic contests much like Olympia and Delphi. There is an intact stadium at the site so of course we all ran on it to test it out! Frankel won the race, but no one else was trying, so does it even count?

After our quick sprint (or jog depending on your level of try-hard) we grabbed a quick lunch then headed to the Mycenaean palace of Tiryns. Tiryns is cool because it has GIANT walls and is on a big hill. Definitely not something you would have wanted to attack! Inside the fortress there are corbelled galleries that no one really knows what they were used for. Scientists have found evidence that they held sheep at one point in time but no way of telling if they are ancient or not. So mysterious sheep lived in Tiryns at some point in the last 3500 years, but that’s all we know.

After Tiryns a bunch of us went and got ice cream and loukamades (fried dough balls smothered in honey and cinnamon) on Dartmouth’s dime. We got treated because today was super hot and we were “troopers”. Thanks Dartmouth! We were all pretty wiped after our long hot day and ice cream coma and went home to write our papers.

Today we started off the morning at the Archaeological Museum of Nafplion where we got to see some of the coolest (and earliest) artifacts in Greece. The museum featured finds from the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods of prehistory. That’s super old!

The museum also had the best example of a full Mycenaean suit of armor. It looked heavy and cumbersome, but it would probably prevent someone from killing you with a bronze weapon. The armor looked so difficult to move around in that archeologists suspect the suit’s owner drove a chariot and did not actually engage in hand-to-hand combat. I feel bad for the horses lugging that tinman around.

After the museum, we had the option of going to the Nafplio Folklore Museum or going to get some mid-morning espresso freddos (iced coffees). The folklore museum had beautiful displays showing traditional Greek garb and arranged example layouts of historical Greek rooms with antique furniture and the like.

After the folklore museum/coffee shop, we met up at the Center for Hellenic Studies, a Harvard University extension here in Nafplio. We received a tour of the building and we learned what resources would be available to us this week. We are very grateful for the CHS, as they have an awesome digital library and amazing WiFi speed for Greece. CHS will certainly make writing our papers easier.

After our tour, we broke for lunch, and then went back to the CHS to get cracking on our papers. They’re due a week from tomorrow.

Greetings friends, families, and the 15 people in Bulgaria who follow our blog,

Today we got a few extra hours of sleep, and did not head to our first site until noon. This meant that most of us did not set alarms, and we woke up at times ranging from early in the morning to well after 11:30 AM. This also meant that a lot of us did not wake up in time for breakfast, so we frantically headed to peripteros to get snacks. For those of you who don’t know, peripteros are kiosks on every street corner that sell basically everything imaginable. They have been lifesavers these past 10 weeks whenever we needed water or quick empty calories.

After the more hectic than necessary morning, we headed for Mycenae. Upon arriving and fighting with the wind to hold on to our tickets, we saw the lion gate. The gate has post and lintel construction, with a relieving triangle on top, on which lions are carved in relief. We also saw grave circle B, which is actually older than grave circle A. It’s almost as if archaeologists named the grave circles specifically to confuse Dartmouth students. Then, we walked around the palace remains, and channeled our inner Indiana Jones by going into a cistern. Unfortunately a rope prevented us from going more than about a dozen meters. Did I just say meters? Boy we’ve been in Greece for a while.

Next was the museum, where we found an E-postcard generator. If you are the recipient of an email with the subject “A message from a friend via the Ephorate of Antiquities of Argolis!” it’s not a scam. You can safely click on the attachments. Also check your spam folders. You never know if you got an E-postcard that looks like it is malware. On a more serious note we saw a lot of figurines and pots in the museum, as well as model snakes.

Speaking of snakes, we saw a live one at the Treasury of Atreus, our final stop for the day. It didn’t bother us and we didn’t bother it. The treasury itself is a large tholos tomb with really good acoustics. The lintel block over the doorway weighs 120 tons, and we’re not really sure how it got there, but it’s nothing a little experimental archaeology can’t figure out. All in all it was a pretty good day.

Today was a pretty excellent day, if a bit too heavy on the bus. We started out with a trip to the Argive Heraion, and suddenly discovered that Greece is really darn HOT in the summer.

After spending a brief time at the summit, the rest of our time overlooking the Argive Plain (some real creative names near Argos) was spent dodging from shady spot to shady spot. We then had another brief bus ride before we were at Epidauros, a massive site with a cool healing sanctuary as well as a games site.Somehow the less Elite games only gave money, because elites were too good for anything for olive oil and money was for οί πολλοί. There might even have been a maze below one of the buildings (and it might have held sneks)! Then we drove the rest of the way to Nauplio and did some exploring before tucking in for the night.

To Whom It May Concern:
We write to you today to tell you about our experience on May 30th. Our day commenced with a visit to the numismatic museum of the Greek state. We met a very learned man named Panagiotis, who makes numismatics his area of study. The museum was the old house of the well-known Heinrich Schliemann, a man who did not make numismatics his study. After the numismatic museum of the Greek state we made the walk to the Acropolis, where we were granted permission to enter into the interior of the building on that outcrop. Then we went to the Wiener Laboratory, where another man by the name of Michailidis (also not a numismatist), gave us another tour. We saw some stratigraphy, some archeobotany, and some anthrakology (not numismatics, but charcoal studies). Then the day ended and reparations were made to the hotel. Thank you for giving this missive your attention, and please take it under consideration.

We took the Flying Dolphin from Piraeus to Aegina this morning and paid a visit to the Temple of Aphaia, an early classical structure that has been the subject of significant debate over its sculptural program – its west pediment housed sculpture in the earlier Archaizing style while its east was filled with sculpture done in the later Severe style. The temple was dedicated to the goddess Aphaia, who was granted divinity by Artemis and is often syncretized with the mountain goddess Britomartis and with Artemis herself. We also took the opportunity to pose as the sculptures in one of the pediments before stopping into the nearby museum.

Our other stop for the day was at Kolonna, a settlement that is home to a Temple of Apollo of which a singular column still stands – the namesake of the site. Corridor houses here from the Early Bronze Age suggest the development of complex administration during this period, and ceramics made here are easily identifiable by the biatite (gold micah) present in their clay. After finishing up with our academics for the day, we did our best to stay out of the overcast weather and spent a few hours exploring the town before riding the Flying Dolphin back home.